The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
A content provider may store episodes of a television or movie series to download. A user, through a client computer, may select an episode of the series to download and watch from the content provider. When a user is finished downloading and watching the first episode on the client computer, the user may select, through the client computer, a second episode in the series to watch, and so on. Watching several episodes of a series in a row is commonly referred to as “binge watching”.
To encourage binge watching, after a client computer finishes playing a selected episode of a series, the client computer may automatically request and play the next episode in the series from the content provider. However, each episode in the series may include a video segment for displaying credit images (credits) that identify people involved in making the episode, and the credits may take several minutes to play through; this video segment is referred to herein as a closing credits segment. Users that are binge watching a series may want to skip to the next episode without watching the closing credits segment of each episode in the series.
A user may want to automatically skip other segments in an episode. For example, each episode in the series may include a video segment for introducing the episode, which often lists the names of the featured cast and crew members; this video segment is referred to herein as an opening credits segment or title segment. Users that are binge watching a series may want to skip the opening credits segment of each episode in the series.
Configuring a computer to detect when a video segment, such as an opening credits segment or closing credits segment, begins and ends in an episode may be difficult. For example, the same video segments may be different between episodes, thus checking for identical frames between episodes may be ineffective.
Configuring a computer to detect when a video segment begins and ends may be difficult for other reasons. For example, an opening credits segment or a closing credits segment may be different for each episode in a series. One or more episodes in a series may start playing a hook segment, which varies in length, before the opening credits segment. One or more episodes in a series may include a segment after the closing credits segment with a final gag. One or more episodes may include outtakes that are played during the closing credits segment, in which case, a user may want the client computer to play the closing credits segment.
Accurately determining the beginning and end of a video segment may improve a user's experience and reduce the overall required bandwidth to stream multimedia content to one or more client computers. For example, if the opening and closing credits segments in an episode are correctly determined, then the client computer may skip those segments without requiring user input to skip forward or backward in a video to find the unique content in the episode. Also for example, the client computer need not download the audio or visual segments that are part of one or more common segments in a series, such as the opening or closing credits segments.